


(I Don't Ever) Wanna Leave This Town

by Sunquail



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Growing Up, M/M, Memory Alteration, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-15 05:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9220568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunquail/pseuds/Sunquail
Summary: Hayner moves up. Hayner moves on.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I played kh2 one time with my bf last year and I'm 100% more interested in the usual spot crew than anything else in the whole game (except for that part with goofy. you know. THAT part) so here we are, writing my own fic since nobody else is gonna write this for me
> 
> I'm glad this child has a support system of some kind because good lord could you imagine if he didn't

  _17, Seifer_

The grass was in that long, shaggy state past summer where the town council had stopped methodically cutting it, which left it suspended in that awkward mullet-equivalent stage. It was for some kind of symbolism, Hayner figured. School being back open meant less kids to goof off up at the hill, and less travellers moving through on the way to the beach or some other holiday-centric location, so less need to keep it short. Gotta clean up, or something. He liked it better this way. He liked the way it felt and sounded in the wind, how the last of the mid-year bugs would hang out and have little bug parties, cricket orchestras and everything.

 His eyes were closed. When the breeze whistled around him, he kept them closed. The light of the sky pressed against his eyelids in colour bursts and the face of the sun rested against his. Why did they call it Sunset Hill anyways, it wasn't like it wasn't sunset everywhere for the nearest 20km in either direction, it wasn't like there was a distinct lack of it in the area. There wasn't especially a lack of Sunset Hills. But this one was theirs. That's what made it...something. Sentimental.

 Well. Whatever.

Either way, it wasn't totally remiss for him to take an hour or two to himself and just...breathe. As much as the recent drift from the others scared him, he wanted to pull himself together, too. It was bound to happen sooner or later so why be afraid of it. He hummed decisively and opened his eyes.

There was a scarred face, upside down, above his. Hayner's entire body jolted with the instinct to launch his fist upward, but he caught himself and instead rolled onto his side and upright. Who DOES that, he thought, and he knew he was burning, making some kind of dumb surprised face, maybe, god forbid, made some kind of dumb surprised noise, because Seifer, damn his stupid smug ass, grinned wide, cackling. "What do you want?" Hayner grumped, dragging his eyes up and down Seifer briefly before turning his face back to the sun.

"Free town, isn't it?" Seifer didn't sit right away, but gazed out over the horizon with a satisfied lift to the corners of his mouth. "Ditched your flunkies?"

"Haven't you?" Hayner retorted, somewhat prematurely, because if Fuu or Rai surfaced now like really annoying dolphins or something, boy would his face be red. Seifer just sat, at last, and tugged a cigarette box from his jacket.

"I'm a big boy," he said, flipping the lid and pulling one from the box with his lips, "I just figured you still needed babysitting."

A half second after Seifer lit a cigarette, exhaling softly through his nose, Hayner reached out, fumbled for the box, and snatched it. The face Seifer made in retaliation was, honestly, priceless, and he probably would have dropped his cigarette and burned a hole right through his dumb purple pants if not for capturing himself.

"Uh," he began, "What the fuck."

Hayner, meanwhile, keeping his face stone-straight, placed a cigarette between his lips and glanced back. "You givin' me a light or what, Almasy?"

It took another second. Seifer leaned forward and clicked his lighter, because apparently he had decided to be a bro right now rather than some morality-imposing dickwad or however he liked to tout himself. Hayner tossed the box back into Seifer's lap and inhaled - gently, because he wasn't a total moron. Which wasn't to say he wasn't any percentage moron. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and heaved a cough, smoke bursting from his nose, resulting in something like a particularly distressed steam train. Seifer, apparently deciding that being a bro was just a part time occupation, laughed hard and harsh whilst Hayner's eyes watered. He flinched when he felt a hand on his back, and stilled when it stayed there.

"The hell were you expecting, man?" Seifer snickered, "You really never done this before, huh?"

Wow. Rude and uncalled for. "Fuck off," Hayner choked out, "Even you had to start somewhere."

Seifer's hand patted him on the back twice. "Go easy n' ride through it. You'll live."

You'll live. Thanks, Hayner thought, really a supportive thing to end with there pal. But then, this was the most supportive Hayner had ever seen him. This was probably as good as it got. You'll live, he thought. He supposed he would.

He put the cigarette back in his mouth. "Why you doin' this?"

Seifer shrugged. "You daylight robbed me, man. Least I can do is make sure you don't waste it."

"No, like." Hayner rubbed his eye with the back of his hand, all the world pretty sure it looked cool and casual and not like he was stopping tears streaming down his face. "Before that. Why'd you sit with me?"

Seifer was quiet then, wearing an expression like he was desperately hoping he wouldn't get called out for an answer in class he didn't actually know. "Y'know," he said, "sky's nice."

Which was definitely without a doubt the most asshole avoidant thing Seifer could have said. But if he wanted to be all cagey and toxic-masculine or whatever it was Pence called it, that was his problem. Hayner was just here to hang out, think his thoughts, and...well, look at the sky, he guessed. Huh.

"Yeah," he replied. "S'not bad."

Minutes ebbed by. Seifer held out the cigarette box.

 

_15, Roxas_

For some reason, a rock about the size of a knuckle sailed in through Hayner's window and landed on his carpet about a foot away from his toes. He looked at it from his phone for about three long seconds, then stood up, and moved to the window to stare out of it in bewildered silence.

Roxas was stood outside, staring just as bewilderedly back. The quiet stretched on.

"I, uh," Roxas started, bridging with a vague gesture, "I thought it was closed."

He cleared his throat, ran his hand through his hair, and nudged his faux-pas under the metaphorical rug.

"Can I help you there, buddy?" Hayner prompted, the picture of helpfulness, crossed arms braced on the sill and grin nice and shit-eating, straight from the oven. Roxas's tiny scowl was absolutely delicious.

“Get down here already, you know what time it is?” he shot back, absolutely not taking Hayner's bullshit (yet, anyway).

Everyone else was tied up today apparently and it had been a long time since the entire gang had hung out together. Pence had a whole swathe of relatives staying with him for some family event or another, aunts and cousins bedding down on his floor (making him send what should be sympathy-inciting texts such as “save me you guys :'(” and “at least take photos for me k” but were interspersed with the most woebegone-looking selfies a guy had ever seen that it couldn't be anything short of hilarious).

Olette, on the other, far more predictable hand, had sacrificed herself to far more extracurricular obligations than one person ever should. Hayner missed her. Last time they'd hung out they'd passed the old mansion to look for the spectral girl at the window Olette had insisted she'd seen. She'd told him she was cute – he'd seen her all of one time and wasn't convinced, because who didn't have better things to do than stand at a window eerily in a locked mansion every so often? If she WAS a ghost she was a crappy one. He wasn't sure why her round, moonish face gave him shivers even so. She reminded him of someone.

It was cloudy, too overcast for the tram roof to be much use for basking like usual. “What are we,” Hayner murmured, “gonna actually ride the tram like a couplea chumps?” What kind of life was that? He met Roxas' eyes for a full few seconds, both more than used to nonverbal discussion by now, and a few minutes later found them lounging on the roof, the metal on the cooler side of lukewarm, pressed up closer against each other like a couple of small birds. Nailed it.

“Or,” Roxas ventured, “we COULD have actually rode the tram like a couple of chumps.”

“And get surrounded by stinky old people? If I wanted to do that I'd've crashed Pence's place.” Hayner countered, shifting his weight back onto his elbows. “Here's an idea, fix your board already.”

“Fix it for me and quit your complaining,” Roxas' laugh was rich and bright, warming along Hayner's skin better than the warm metal could ever. Hayner didn't want to look at him, and didn't, because that would take root and not now. Not right now. Right now was just a cloudy day and he could let it slip out of his hands because there'd be so many others.

Hayner knew there was something unplaceable, extraordinary about Roxas but he never could say so. He knew, down in his gut. Call it instinct. Call it the way Roxas shifted uneasily from foot to foot when he was uncertain, the way he stuck his tongue out when he thought deeply. Some kind of unspeakable quality that could be picked up by some people in poetry and prose like one would talk about the dawn chorus. Hayner fell back on deciding it was his hair. No side character had hair that impossible, eyes that shade of daylight-lakeside blue, had he played Golden Sun or what?

Or it was just that he was special. Hayner glanced over and his face was human and smiling, open, dimpled and pink in the cheeks. He freckled in the height of summer when the weather was clearest and Hayner remembered the first summer he noticed this and promptly lost his mind, so to speak. It shouldn't have been a big deal. So did he. Hell, so did half the people in the world. It wasn't a huge deal but at the same time it was tectonic plates sliding in his chest. The alteration seemed so gradual and yet so much of an unfair ambush part of his brain pulled on him that he didn't know if he had the right to feel surprised or not.

Sometimes he could brush his hand against Roxas's and sometimes he couldn't. Sometimes he could justify that, what, that was something friends did, platonically. Heaven knew he cuddled up to Pence as often as he could see reasonably appropriate (because, let's face it, nobody has ever been made to be as huggable as Pence). And heaven knew he threw an absolute fit when Olette kissed his cheek and he thought, oh god, now everything is different, but it wasn't and it never would be because firstly, Olette had FAR more sense than that, and secondly, if they were close, why not? Why not, after all.

Why not? Nothing made it different. He brushed his hand against Roxas's.

“Oh yeah,” he said, like a small breath after a gale, and dug into his jacket pocket with his other hand. Roxas made a small sound of attention, didn't quite look around but canted his head to the side slightly like a vigilant dog. The tram bent around a turn and he braced his hands on the roof against it, bending with the current of it. The second after he was scrambling not to lose his balance as Hayner tossed something small towards him and he tried to catch it in both clumsy adolescent hands. He held it between his thumb and forefinger against the firelit sky, and laughed his rich bright laugh again.

Hayner grinned. “You can keep your goddamn rock.”

 

_22_

He passed a stranger in the station, someone who made his heart jump into his mouth, who roused a part of him he didn't know was sleeping. When he touched their arm and they turned, it was someone else entirely. He didn't know how to retrieve his words fast enough to apologise, and swept back into the crowd.

 

_20, Seifer, Olette_

Leftover takeout got old after three days. Seifer had left the prawns, which was uncharacteristically thoughtful of him, but wasn't something Hayner paid attention to, or thanked him for. He bumped the fridge closed with his hip and perched on the arm of the couch, digging through the box with a fork. The bags under his eyes were deep, heavy. If he was supposed to remember what day it was, he was doing a piss poor job.

To give Seifer credit, he knocked before he entered, and permeated his entrance with a 'yo' like usual, and followed it up almost immediately with “dude, put on some real pants already, it's like 2pm.”

“Only my momma tells me to do that,” Hayner countered breezily. “I thought you were the one who told me to take them off.”

Seifer snorted. “At 2pm? I have some kind of order in my life, you little shit.”

Coulda fooled him. He let that one sit for a while. To be honest, sat with lukewarm Chinese in the afternoon in just an undershirt and boxers? You've looked better, Hayn. He poked around in his box in silence. The clock was shaped like a cat, smiling, curled in a ball. The swinging pendulum, an alarmed looking mouse. It was easy to stare at it, lose track of time (ironically). It ticked, it sounded like Olette tapping her nails on the coffee table anxiously as she sifted through appointments.

“Hey,” Hayner asked around a prawn tail, “Remember when we first hooked up?” He'd asked this question before with a smirk and a cocked eyebrow because fuck if it wasn't a funny story in the right mood, but that mood was empty and gone right now. Just pensive staring into noodles. Seifer laughed, a deep in-the-throat rumble.

“I figured the, uh. Rival tension shit just got to you,” he answered, “That or you just missed me sooo much after hanging offa me all through elementary.” The jab, however, didn't precision-strike the way Seifer had wanted. When he looked around, Hayner was blankly gazing into the middle distance. Seifer thumbed at his lighter.

“I think there was some other kid,” Hayner said, very quietly. Quiet wasn't a usual setting for him. “I was...pissed off? Or jealous? Or sad, or...” He paused again, bit his lip, leaned his head back to the heavens of the ceiling fan. “You know that feeling when want someone else, so you just...”

“Whoa, whoa, okay,” Seifer interrupted, hands up, expression light. “You're saying I was your rebound from some mystery kid who got your feefees in a bunch?”

“That's the thing!” Hayner threw his hands up in matched expression, fork of takeout included for emphasis. “I have no fucking clue! It just feels like that!”

“Sounds like you're excusing how much you're attracted to me, dude.”

“Oh yeah, you got me, gold star for you, asshole.”

Hayner gestured for a cigarette, fork back in the takeout box and on the table. He was agitated and he couldn't place why and if that wasn't annoying as hell he didn't know what it was. Nicotine could calm that, eating couldn't. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth but didn't place it. “Seifer,” he ventured, “you don't remember anyone else, right? Me, Olette, Pence. There was someone else.”

Seifer hummed, and humoured him by pausing for thought for a few moments. “Nah, man,” he replied, “There was just you.”

And that was that, moving along the afternoon to the ticks of the mouse pendulum swinging, situated one degree out of place like a painting hung crooked. Like usual, in some ways. Seifer didn't stay – he was that kind of squatter roommate who could stay over for days at a time, do housework or cook meals if he felt like it even, but technically didn't pay rent. Hell, Hayner wasn't even entirely sure where he lived. He just breezed in, stuck around, raided the fridge, bought takeout, and left again. Hayner wouldn't be surprised if Seifer was the six-foot-two equivalent of a stray cat.

The lightbulb in the ceiling fan hummed, flickered. Hayner blinked up at it, still stuck in the persistent nagging haze that was, honestly, different to the usual kind of haze he spent the usual kind of days in. Things were changing. Nothing ever changed, but then, this wasn't Twilight Town. This was outside the border, closer to the nighttime hemisphere. Closer to dusk. It was time to get used to the dark. Pence had once said it was like some crappy metaphor for adulthood, too heavy handed. Hayner wanted to go back to the beach. He picked up his phone and called Olette.

“Dumb question for you,” he started, like he'd just picked up an in-person conversation like it was no big deal. And hey, it wasn't, there was something with the three of them – him and Olette and Pence, they knew around each other like...well. Like they'd changed but stayed the same. Just like he'd said years ago. Just like he'd said to them both, and also--

“Hi to you too,” she replied, tone drawn and fond. She'd gone to school for some kind of therapy so god knew she was up to her ears in textbooks and stress half the time. Really, honestly, Hayner was doing her a favour. Hayner was a fucking saint thank you very much. Pence was better at it but Olette would just have to make the hell do. “You know I love dumb questions, I actually know how to answer them and show you up.”

“Aces. You're perfect.” He'd been in a weird state of poker face all day but he felt the sunshine of Olette's smile creep into his memory and set off an expressive kind of chain reaction. “So... Listen, do you ever remember there being...someone else, some other kid who hung out in the spot and the clocktower with us? I know it's the kind of thing we'd remember... Side-effect, I guess...”

He trailed off, expecting her to pick him up with a laugh, and a reassurance that he needed more sleep or something therapisty like that. The pause at the other end of the line was long enough to make him think she'd put the phone down entirely and walked away. He glanced uncertainly to the table, and to the carpet. He wet his lips, her name solidifying on them, and then he heard a shuffle, slight movement, and he sat straight again. When Olette spoke, it sounded like she was very, very far away.

“Hayner,” she breathed, “I thought it was just me.”

 

_18, Olette_

She had yelled at him before, but this was different. He'd always laughed it off, or overplayed his offense and sulked, a push and pull, a tug-of-war kind of interaction that went through paces they both knew were mostly performance for each other. This was different. He yelled back and it was real.

She'd clenched her fist like she was going to throw a punch, drew her face into a furious snarl, and he kept a level eye the whole time. The smoke in his fingers burned down steadily, dropping ash on the ground of the back alley. Her eyes were verdant and overbright with too much rage and too much hurt. He couldn't look directly into them.

He dropped the cigarette on the ground, stubbed it out with his boot, and left before she said another word.

 

_16, Pence_

"Uuuughhhgh."

Pence sighed. He gently, with all the tenderness of the first blossoms of spring, lifted Hayner's head, pulled his workbook from underneath, and set him back down, giving him a couple of brief, affectionate pats for good measure. People like Pence were what best friends were made of.

"So what's the problem, Hayn?"

"Mmmnnnnghf," came the well-articulated and obvious reply.

"Uh huh, I'm just gonna go ahead and file that under 'vague' and 'for later', unless that's one of the ones I should be able to get intuitively."

" _Mmnhhmf nngh_."

"I'm doing the best I can, dude."

Hayner let out a sound like when an old dog sighs. He twisted his head, gazed up at Pence, and - oh, if that wasn't the most quietly pathetic, heartbreaking expression he'd ever seen. See, Hayner was a ham most of the time, sure, but the rest of the time, when something was really wrong, he was great at playing it subtle. Pence's eyebrows knit together in sympathy and Hayner tallied him another point in the best friend scoreboard. "Is Olette coming?" Hayner finally settled on, tone just slightly pitiable and voice a little croaky.

"Not yet," Pence replied, glancing around the spot, and then at his watch. "Not until five, she's cramming."

"Is--"

"Rox is there too."

Hayner huffed again. He was quiet for so long after that, Pence flipped his workbook back open and managed about thirty seconds worth real genuine honest homework before the air seemed heavy enough for Pence to pinpoint with frightening accuracy the precise instant Hayner was about to speak again.

"So--"

"This is about Roxas isn't it," Pence flicked his eyes back to Hayner over the top of his book, "You can cut out the theatrics, I saw the cow-eyes you were making at him the other day."

Slowly, deliberately, Hayner raised his head. His eyebrows were set into a deep line. "Cow-eyes."

"Yeah, cow-eyes-- What, c'mon, it's a thing, people say that."

"Literally nobody says that but your grandma."

“The point is I'm right and I know you know it.”

He was playing the you-know-you-love-me card. Ungrateful. Hayner had INVENTED that card. "Right now Olette is my best friend."

"That's fine, she agrees." Pence's expression was too airy for a conversation like this, like he wasn't even blatantly offending Hayner by being both observant and an ass about it. Hayner remembered the good old days when he was the overconfident one and Pence was all shy. Oh, sure, he said he was proud for Pence coming out of his shell, but when he put him in a position like this when he was always right?

Another pause yawned out across the heavy air in the alley. Pence every so slowly and ever so agonisingly arced an eyebrow. Hayner lifted his head back up and flopped against the couch.

“He doesn't know, does he?” he asked next, voice way too quiet. “I mean. It's cool if he does. But not yet.” Pence frowned.

“I don't think so,” he admitted, “You're okay at hiding stuff, me an' Olette just know what to look for. Remember, uh. Whatsername. Firra Strauss in second grade.”

“Sure, right until she found out and punched me.”

“Right. Until then.”

He settled for exasperated gesturing and more vague sounds. Pence nodded knowingly. “I don't know how a person can just go around! Being like that!” he managed, “Maybe he does it on purpose. He's a sneak, y'know.”

“Hayn, he couldn't sneak his way out of a paper bag.”

"Oho, that's what he _wants_ you to think."

The fact was Roxas was the goddamn horizon. Roxas was the yellow, the white in the sunset just beyond the red spanning out across the sky, everpresent. Roxas was something he didn't want to mess up on. Something unattainable. Something that, if he thought too hard, seemed not even real, like he pulled at the edges of concrete senses. Something like a mirage in the desert, that he couldn't put into words because he wasn't even sure anyone else saw what he was seeing. Hayner wasn't good with words on the best of days. He was a boy, with a boy's mouth and a boy's heart, ragged and braced against the earth with feet that never left the ground. Not like Olette with her stories. Not like Pence with his camera lens.

Things were changing. But nothing ever changed, not yet. He still had time. He'd be ready before any of the others, but damn if he wouldn't make it wait. He could spin it out for a little longer. Hayner was on the couch. Pence was reading his book. Olette and Roxas were coming home with four ice creams. It both was, and wasn't, could never be, ageless.

 

_17, cont_

He was angry, he was so angry, and he was tired of yelling at Pence when he tried to help because he was scared, and sometimes, sometimes, mistakes happen when you look for someone you can BE angry with, sometimes that happens. Sometimes Hayner did things he wasn't proud of. Sometimes he worked out what went wrong, and sometimes he just ended up pushed against a wall, pinned, official arch-nemesis pressed against his lips. It could have happened to anyone.

It could happen to anyone, he thought.

He took a breath, fluttered his eyes open slightly, pulled Seifer by the back of the neck closer into him. So maybe he didn't have to be angry. Feeling anything was fine. Not feeling anything was fine.

He wasn't soft enough, but he could pretend. He would be fine, he told himself, FINE if he could just--

What was he even missing at all?

 

_25_

Sometimes his breath still caught in his throat when the colours of the sunset withered under the horizon like a dying phoenix. He could see the stars out here.

**Author's Note:**

> [so who's interested in how I try to rationalise twilight town](https://i.gyazo.com/b8279c30b91353c750fb3b83bb9ef4cf.png)
> 
>  
> 
> drives me nuts this does
> 
> honestly I was listening to perfect life by steven wilson and really badly needed imagery of hayn bumming a cigarette off of seifer. boy makes some bad choices. boy works it out eventually.


End file.
